Participating in a Community – MUV601

The name of the community/group;

A description of the purpose and activities of the group;

Hyperpixel is run by a group of people that have custom built a Minecraft server and forum. They started out as a minecraft youtube channel that built custom maps and have now become one of the largest Minecraft Network in the world. Hyperpixel is a minigames based server where many of the games that the server hosts are short competitive based games that pit players against each other. It is a very large community of player, most of the times I visited the number of players in the server fluctuated from 10,000 to over 17,000.Here is a update number of players. The forum has over 500,000 registered members. The Minecraft server that they run is mostly for entertainment purposes with some social activities taking place. On the other hand the Forum ranges from social to educational and discussion. From what I have found while switching game modes and browsing the forum the Hyperpixel server is actually made up of multiple Minecraft servers. When a user goes to a lobby and then a game, they are actually passed to another server. Due to the size of the community of active players this is the only effective way the manage this. In saying this thought the gameplay is not hindered in any way.

Games;

Game modes that Hyperpixel currently include are; Mega Walls, Blitz Survival Games, SkyWars, Smash Heroes, Crazy Walls, Turbo Kart Racers, UHC Champions, Warlords, Cops and Crims, Arcade Games, Arena Brawl, The TNT Games, Quakecraft, VampireZ, Paintball Warfare, The Walls.
A full list and description can be found here.
Players can choose what game they want to play. To get to a game from the main lobby you have to select and click the character with the corresponding game name above it.

This then takes to another lobby where you can go and select the difficulty of the game you want to play. These and usually listed on a sign. Once enough players are queued it launches you into the game.

In the games there is the normal try to win but there is also the ability to gain gems and other goodies from games, like treasure boxes. This is mostly based around the store that Hyperpixel runs. This store is to used to keep the servers running and pay the people that work on it.

Forum;

The forum on the Hyperpixel website is used for communication between players and a way the communicate with the admins.
In the forum it includes the official rules to playing on the Hyperpixel servers and rules for the forums too. I also found this great startup guide which helps first time forum users.

Descriptions of at two occasions on which you participated with the group;

First;

This was the first time I entered the server. I found the server on the minecraftservers.org website. There was a brief description on the type of server it was so I knew it was a mini game type server.After connecting and getting into the server I checked out their mini games that they had to offer and selected SkyWars. I have played this mode in the past so I kind of knew how it worked. I got into the lobby and found the sign to click to enter the game’s. It was a little confusing for a start trying to figure out how to get into games and I didn’t know that the signs where that key. But after following everyone else I got it.I decided to join a team based (two man teams) normal mode game.
This took you to a very crowded room where you waited for the game to start.
After it put you in a box with your team mate.
A count down when and you started. The aim was to kill the other teams without falling off the side.

Obviously I die pretty quickly at the start but after observing other player after I died I got better at it. Although I never got near the top.

Second;

On the second occasion I decided to try out one of the custom mini game types.

This game requires you to download a pack to play it. It asks you when you go to the lobby if you want to download it and on accepting it installs it. This give you a custom look.

The game mode I decided to try was Turbo Kart Races. This is a variation of Mario Kart. The first time that I tried to join this game style I had difficulties as I was put in a lobby with no enough players to start the game. On the second attempt later on I was successful.

Once it it started you racing pretty much straight away. You are in a kart and racing to win. Items spawn in the race that you can collect. These items can then be used to slow the other racers down.

I did find the racing a little difficult as the lag caused issues sometimes, the kart would freeze and then jump. This meant you quite often hit walls and would lose a few places.
In the end though I managed to finish a race in fourth place. I thought I did quite well as I could tell I was playing against seasoned players.